


From a Certain Point of View

by KCKenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s05e16 The Lawless, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Post-Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Sad Obi-Wan Kenobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29113998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KCKenobi/pseuds/KCKenobi
Summary: Kenobi didn’t know he was there. Didn’t know any of them were—seeing the erratic rise and fall of his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw. The sight felt wrong, yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away.5 strangers witness Obi-Wan’s lowest moments, plus 1 who shouldn’t have been a stranger.—(or: we see some of Obi-Wan’s biggest losses from the points of view of side characters)
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, primarily
Comments: 44
Kudos: 224





	From a Certain Point of View

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obirain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obirain/gifts).



━━━━━━━━┛ 1 ┗━━━━━━━━

His façade was cracking now.

Sabé had seen through it from the beginning, to be clear. In those days stranded on Tatooine, when there was nothing left to do but worry and wait for Padmé and the Jedi to return, she’d had plenty of time to figure him out. She was one of Amidala’s handmaidens—reading people was part of the job. And so she saw through the proper, wise, detached Jedi Padawan—to the insecure boy underneath.

But now, as she watched him braid the child’s hair and caught the tremble in his hands, Sabé saw another layer even beneath that.

“Why do I need the braid, sir?” the child said, tilting his head back. “I mean, it’s great, don’t get me wrong, but—”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ Anakin,” came the gentle reply. “And the braid is a Jedi tradition—the mark of a Padawan learner. So long as you study under the tutelage of a Master, your braid will grow.”

Sabé should’ve kept walking—yet, in the empty corridor of Theed Palace, she felt rooted to the spot. She peered through the crack in the door, to where the boy was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Kenobi knelt behind him, cloak fanned out against the marble as his hands worked slowly, winding the hair strand over strand. From her spot in the doorway, their faces were obscured.

“And what happens after that?”

Kenobi’s hands faltered before resuming their motion. “You mean, what happens when you’re Knighted?”

The boy nodded, and the short braid bobbed.

“Your Master cuts it off for you. With his lightsaber,” Kenobi said quietly. “You present it to him as a gift of thanksgiving.”

“So what happened to yours?”

He tied off the braid at the bottom. Handed a mirror to the child, who lifted it up. And in the reflection, Sabé caught a glimpse of their faces—the child, his eyes light and uncertain. And the Padawan—the _Master_ —in his face, the same tightness she remembered from the funeral pyre the night before. Except now, his eyes were red-rimmed.

“Sabé.”

She jumped. Couldn’t help it—months of training couldn’t shake from her the start of being caught eavesdropping. She turned to find Captain Panaka, no longer alone in the vacant hall.

“The Queen is waiting,” he said. “There is much to do.”

“Of course, Captain.”

She turned to follow, melting into a façade of her own, and never did hear Kenobi’s answer.

For that, she was almost grateful.

━━━━━━━━┛ 2 ┗━━━━━━━━

Vokara Che began her shift at five in the morning. She made her usual rounds—checked first on the patients she feared may not make it through the night, breathed sighs of relief to find they had. War would not be easy on the healers. It would not be easy on anyone. But if Geonosis was any indication of how the next few months would go (and she begged the Force that it _would_ only be months), she was already bracing herself.

It was still dark out as she moved through the Halls of Healing, stopping outside Skywalker’s room. He was expected to wake up soon—the pain medication would be wearing off, and he was due for a change of the gauze that covered his severed limb. Vokara paused in front of the door to fish for her card key.

But she realized she didn’t need to—one of the Padawan healers must’ve left the door cracked, because she could see into the room even from the hall. She’d be sure to give the child a talking to, later—this was a hospital, after all, not a barn. But she pushed the irritation aside as she heard a voice float out into the hall.

The voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He’d spent the night at Skywalker’s bedside, despite her insistence that he needed to heal from his own wounds. Kenobi was stubborn—always had been, that one—so she wasn’t truly surprised to hear that he was still there.

What she was surprised to hear was this:

“Obi-Wan?”

Skywalker’s voice was small. Fragile. As if she’d been transported back in time, Vokara imagined herself ten years before, patching up a little boy from Tatooine who had burnt his hands with a training saber. Oh, how Kenobi had worried, then. They were ridiculous, the pair of them. But it had been a long time since she’d heard the boy so vulnerable, and the realization made her pause.

She drew back from the door—she’d come back later. Later, when he had processed things a little…when he was ready to see what lay beneath the gauze…

“I’m here,” came Kenobi’s voice. Through the crack in the door, Vokara saw him reach forward, his hand coming to land on Skywalker’s shoulder. “What do you need?”

Skywalker’s eyes darted everywhere—the walls, the floor, the IV taped to his unwounded arm—before landing on Kenobi’s face. “I need—I need—"

He tried to reach out.

Only to realize he’d reached with an arm that was no longer there.

His voice broke.

“You.”

And in the shuddered exhale that followed, Vokara saw the Chosen One for what he really was—a boy who was exceptional. A boy who was strong. A boy on whom far too many expectations had been placed.

But beneath all that—a _boy._

Obi-Wan moved forward—caught Skywalker as he pitched sideways, letting his former Padawan bury his face in the front of his tunic. And from this distance, she couldn’t hear the words that passed between them, but she did know this—

The war would not be easy on anyone.

But especially not these two. 

━━━━━━━━┛ 3 ┗━━━━━━━━

The last time he saw Kenobi, he was carrying a body.

Hondo hadn’t seen it happen. He’d been far too busy controlling his insolence—whatever the hell _that_ meant—and saving his own ass. Not that he’d really needed _saving,_ of course. Pirates could handle themselves, could handle anything. And Hondo Ohnaka was no ordinary pirate.

But even he startled to hear there was a dead Jedi lying on his property.

“Outta my way, sleemos,” Hondo said, shoving his way through the murmuring masses. “What the—”

He stopped dead—er, poor choice of words—stopped _short_. Those horn-headed fools were gone, it seemed, and so was Kenobi—they’d disappeared somewhere in a blaze of red and blue light while Hondo was distracted. But yes, sure enough, he could see the body on the ground from here. Behind him, he vaguely heard some dimwits muttering about how to get rid of the body (“We’ll be blamed for the death of a Jedi!” one lamented, before another voice spoke up, “Ah, but we’ll be blamed for the death of a _Jedi!_ Imagine the notoriety…”).

Hondo stepped forward just as Kenobi appeared alone.

He looked a little worse for wear, but was on his feet—though it looked as if walking hurt. As if he were being led forward by something other than his own will. When he got to the crumpled body, Hondo watched him drop to his knees.

“Master Gallia,” Kenobi said, taking the body by the shoulders. “Adi.”

No answer. He set her back down on the dirt. Closed her eyes with his fingers, then closed his own.

Hondo looked down. Should he be watching this? Kenobi didn’t know he was there. Didn’t know any of them were—seeing the erratic rise and fall of his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw. The sight felt wrong, yet Hondo couldn’t tear his eyes away.

He was still watching as Kenobi lifted her into his arms and boarded the ship, his own movement as lifeless as the body.

━━━━━━━━┛ 4 ┗━━━━━━━━

He didn’t fight, though she knew he was more than capable.

Not that it would really do any good—Ursa Wren’s armor was beskar. Even a lightsaber couldn’t strike through. So perhaps it was just as well that the prisoner trudged forward slowly, his eyes cast down as they left the Sundari throne room. She could feel the eyes of Maul and the others behind her, so she nudged the blaster hard against his ribs.

He didn’t even flinch.

It was bad form for Mandalorians to take pity on the enemy. Especially _this_ enemy—family was everything, honor was everything, and this man had disgraced them both.

But still, as she felt him start to shake against her death grip, something in Ursa tightened.

The corridor was empty. Most of the old palace staff had fled after Kryze’s arrest. The echo of the prisoner’s footsteps was the jarringly loud—second only to Ursa’s own heartbeat, which was stupidly fast. It shouldn’t have been. She was doing the right thing. The only things worth fearing were behind her—or dead.

She knew Duchess Kryze was no hero. Though Maul’s propaganda may have had its faults, every lie was built upon truth. Even so, she’d grown up with that face—the face she’d seen crumple, the voice she’d heard break as her body hit the floor. Countless mornings sitting in front of the holoTV between her own siblings, then later with Sabine and Tristan when she was grown, had seared the Duchess’s voice in her mind forever. Ursa knew that to grow up was to become disillusioned by heroes. Heaven knows that had happened long ago—she wouldn’t have joined Death Watch if it hadn’t. But it was one thing to believe in a cause. It was quite another to kill someone for the sake of it.

They boarded the transport. Ursa pushed the prisoner to his knees, and he sank without protest. As if his legs had simply given out, his bones struck the metal. The sound was hollow.

So were his eyes.

She wasn’t sure what made her say it, but suddenly Ursa found the words tumbling out.

“There’s an extra sheet for your cot. Beneath the bedpan,” she heard herself saying. “They keep the cells cold.”

The prisoner looked up. Though he didn’t speak, his watery eyes asked a question.

“Don’t let them see you with it, though,” she continued. “They’ll take it away.”

His face changed—a flicker of mirth, then emptiness, then remorse.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “But there is nothing else they could possibly take from me.”

━━━━━━━━┛ 5 ┗━━━━━━━━

Jocasta Nu had spent too many years in the Archives not to know its secrets.

She knew where to find hidden scraps of information, how to unearth the past in an instant. She had memorized the order of every book and datapad on the shelf, every nook in which to hole away, every mission report ever filed. She knew where foolish Padawans came to canoodle in the alcoves, believing themselves to be out of sight. She knew where to find anything, and anyone.

And she knew where people went when they didn’t want to be found.

He used to come here as a youngling, to this little alcove between the bookshelves. This had always been his spot—when he was studying for a particularly hard test, when he was running from playground bullies or angry with his Master or afraid he wasn’t good enough. He’d come here all through his Padawan years to hide away after hard missions, to lose himself in literature until he was ready to find his way back again. And when Qui-Gon had passed, and she’d begun finding him here at odd hours—holed up with a book, eyes fixed on the pages without moving to read a word, or falling asleep with his head on the table—Jocasta had always kept a watchful eye.

He’d come far less frequently since the start of the war—he was rarely on Coruscant, she imagined. So to see him now, looking frail and tired and empty, made her pause. She almost broke her own golden rule—almost _interrupted someone while he’s reading, Force forbid._ But he needed someone. She could tell, he needed someone.

But another voice filled the space before hers could.

“They’re looking for you.”

Jocasta drew back, disappearing into the adjacent wall of shelves. She could still see Obi-Wan between the rows of books, saw him turn toward the voice.

He cleared his throat. “Who?”

“Who do you think?” came the reply—Skywalker. “A meeting. About what to do with Offee.” His voice broke off in a sharp exhale. “Master Koon told me to find you.”

Obi-Wan leaned back and closed his book, tucking a slip of paper inside to mark the page.

“He could’ve commed.”

“Well, members of the Council aren’t exactly overflowing with common sense these days.”

“Anakin—”

“Just go.”

“I want to—”

“I said _go._ You shouldn’t miss this meeting—we all know deciding the fate of other people’s Padawans is right up your alley.”

Skywalker came into full view now, emerging from the bookshelves with his back to Jocasta. But even blind to his face, she could read the rage and the hurt through the tightness of his shoulders, the clench of his fists, the flare in the Force. Obi-Wan’s eyes skirted down to the table, the back up again.

“Anakin, I’m sorry.” He ran his hands down his face. “I told the Council what I knew, what I believed, but logically…the evidence… How would it have looked if I had—”

“It doesn’t matter how it would’ve _looked._ You stand up for your family.”

“You stand up for what’s _right,_ ” Obi-Wan said, then exhaled. “Or you try to. But the truth isn’t always clear. And when she was proven innocent—”

“No thanks to you.”

“—she still chose to leave.”

“She chose to leave the Order because the Order failed her. Because _you_ failed her.”

“Are you upset that she chose to leave the Order, Anakin, or that she chose to leave you?”

Skywalker turned away. He braced himself on the bookshelves, then slammed his hands against the frame. The corridor echoed with the sound of shuddering datapads. Jocasta jumped.

“The war has hurt all of us. The greatest injury being that of the young entrusted to our care,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “We have failed them in a great many ways—”

“Yeah,” Anakin nearly whispered. “Yeah, you have.”

The silence that followed was a librarian’s dream.

Anakin left first. He strode out with a quiet murmur—“The Council’s waiting.”—his heavy footsteps rattling the books against their neighbors. Jocasta backed deeper into the shadows until she was certain he was gone, before peering through again to the man on the other side.

Obi-Wan still sat with a book before him, but this time his eyes were turned up—toward the ceiling, toward the sky. He blinked hard. Then again. Again.

It was a long time before he looked down again and stood, leaving the book and pushed-out chair in his wake.

━━━━━━━━┛ +1 ┗━━━━━━━━

Everything was warm.

That was Tatooine—sunny and bright and dry and full of good things, Luke decided. So many good things. Like watching Uncle Owen fix the water vaporators and Aunt Beru letting him taste the first droplets, like running to town for groceries and petting the eopies in the stalls. The worst sorrow he’d ever endured was when Uncle Owen had sat on his wooden starfighter and broken it beneath his giant butt.

That was alright, though—toys just showed up, sometimes. There would be more. Luke had been finding them for years now, out in front of the gravestone of his grandmother, who Aunt Beru explained had been hurt really bad before he was born and died. He felt like he should feel sad about that—and he _did_ feel sad about it, because death is sad, everyone knew that—but he still couldn’t quite picture her. Not enough to be sad over her. Not the way he pictured his parents.

He wondered about them, sometimes. When the other kids at school ran to their grown-ups at the end of the day squealing “ _Mommy! Daddy!”_ Luke felt a strange kind of feeling as he spoke the words “aunt” and “uncle” instead. He used to ask about them all the time—about his dad, a _navigator_ , who must’ve known every star and moon and nebula. And his mom, whose tenderness and joy he could only try to conjure up in his memory. Uncle Owen never said much. Though sometimes, Aunt Beru would describe them, when Luke asked. His father was tall. His mother was beautiful. They had blue eyes, like he did now.

He wished that wasn’t _all_ he knew.

This is what Luke was thinking as he approached his grandmother’s grave now. Even from a distance, he could see that something was there—and the anticipation banished any thoughts of his parents from his mind as he sped up, running toward the headstone. And— _yes!_

There in the sand was a new wooden starfighter.

“Wizard!” Luke beamed as he bent down to grab it, then floated the carved toy through the air. “This one’s even cooler than the one Uncle Owen broke!”

He ran through the sand, making starship sounds with his mouth as he moved the figurine, laughing when he nearly tripped and sent the thing flying. He was dusting himself off when he caught a glimpse of movement in the distance.

And there, Luke saw him.

It was a man, out across the sand, his image wavering like a mirage. He could just make out an auburn beard streaked with gray. Tan tunics. A brown robe. He looked kind. Kind, but sad.

They met eyes. And though this man was a stranger (and Aunt Beru always warned against talking to strangers), Luke couldn’t help but feel as though he _wasn’t_. Or, at least, shouldn’t be.

Luke waved.

And across the distance, the man lifted his arm to wave back.

Luke risked a glance behind him, just to make sure Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen weren’t watching, then started forward. But he’d barely taken a single step before realizing it—

The man was already gone.

Luke stood still beneath the heat of the twin suns, feeling inexplicably as if something had been taken from him. The wooden toy hung forgotten in his fist.

But then he remembered himself, and again was wrapped in the warmth of hope and youth. Luke skipped home, already wondering what Aunt Beru had made for dinner, having forgotten all about the man and his grandmother and stories of parents he couldn’t remember. That was better, anyway. Better not to know what he was missing.

Better not to know what he had lost.

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaaaaaa, so remember when I said I wasn’t going to actually write this idea? Sike! Thanks [ obirain ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obirain/pseuds/obirain) for the lovely push I needed to work on this—I had so much fun with it! I’ve never explored any of these characters before, and it was a neat lil exercise.
> 
> Also lol let’s just pretend From a Certain Point of View isn’t the name of an existing star wars book….i couldn’t help myself eeeeek it’s fine you can’t copyright titles so uh….shhhhh?
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos always appreciated 😊 Come say hello on tumblr: [ kckenobi ](https://kckenobi.tumblr.com/)


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